Dust to Dust dffi-7

by Beverly Connor

  Maybelle Agnes Gauthier was a lanky woman. Even at her advanced age she did not look shrunken, but large boned and tall. Her hair, fine white wisps over the crown of her head, was thin and showing a pinkish scalp. Her face was crisscrossed with lines. Her lips had all but disappeared, they were so thin and lined. She wore a pink housedress, a gray bulky sweater, leggings, and house slippers. But most noticeable about her were her eyes. Diane had never seen eyes their color. They were a dark bluish color with flecks of yellow and light blue, almost like copper ore. The eyes followed each one of them as they arranged their chairs. They had a sheen to them as they moved, as if she had had cataract surgery.

  “Maybelle,” said Lillian, “it’s been a very long time. The last time I saw you was at one of Rosewood’s cotillions and we were young women dressed in white gowns and gloves.”

  “Cotillion. I haven’t heard that word in a long time. Who are you? I don’t recognize you.”

  “I’m Lillian Chapman. I used to be Lillian Egan.”

  “Lillian Egan? I don’t remember. You say we knew each other? I didn’t know many people.”

  “We did not know each other well,” said Lillian, “but our paths crossed on occasion. My father owned the railroad that ran through Rosewood.”

  “I remember the railroad. I think my father probably hated your father.” She gave a throaty chuckle. “He hated a lot of people.”

  “We would like to know about your life,” said Detective Hanks.

  “My life? You would like to know about my life? Why?” she said.

  “We think it would be interesting,” he said.

  “Do you?” she said. “All of you people have come here thinking my life is interesting? Why is that?”

  “You are a famous artist, for starters,” said Hanks.

  Gauthier was far more clearheaded than Diane thought she would be. It frankly surprised her. She knew Lillian had a keen mind, but she came from a long line of people who aged slowly.

  “And we have been digging in your backyard,” said Hanks slowly.

  She looked startled, almost confused. Then she said, “Young man, I don’t have a backyard.”

  “You did a long time ago,” he said. “Didn’t you?”

  “A long time ago, yes. That was so very long ago. Before… before…”

  She let the sentence fade away without finishing it. She seemed to have withdrawn into herself.

  “May we record our conversation?” said Hanks.

  Silence.

  He turned on the recorder anyway.

  “You know, Maybelle, at our age,” said Lillian, “there isn’t much that can hurt us anymore. Sometimes it’s good to tell people about our lives before everything is gone. I remember your mother and her large hats.”

  Maybelle smiled. “Those hats. As a little girl, I used to traipse around the house in those hats.” She frowned. “Until Father came home. He was opposed to traipsing. My mother is dead. So is my father.”

  “We are very old,” said Lillian.

  “Yes. Very old,” she repeated. “Why have you come?” she asked again.

  “You asked us to,” said Diane. “You said if you ever disappeared, come find you. You wrote it on the bottom of a desk drawer. It took a long time, but we are here.”

  She didn’t say anything for a long time, just stared at Diane.

  “I did, didn’t I? I had forgotten. It was so long ago.”

  “Why did you leave your note on the bottom of a drawer?” asked Hanks.

  “I didn’t want my father to find it. He wouldn’t know to look there. I thought Mother would.”

  “How did you come to be here?” asked Diane. “Why aren’t you living in Pigeon Ridge? You did live there, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. My mother gave the house in Pigeon Ridge to me. It was hers to give. I came to be here because my father put me away. Mother came to see me, but she couldn’t rescue me like I thought she would. I have a brother somewhere. I don’t think he knows where I am. He was a good brother. He must be dead too. Maybe I shouldn’t tell you my story after all.” She turned her head away, dismissing them.

  “We know your brother,” said Diane.

  Gauthier jerked her head back around and looked at Diane.

  “Your younger brother, Everett. Isn’t that his name?” said Diane.

  “You know him?” she said. “Does he know where I am?”

  “We found you,” said Diane. “He could have too. You would be proud of him. He has several businesses. He married and has a son. He has a grandson. His son is a doctor and is going to run for Congress. His grandson is a law student at the University of Georgia. He’s going to be a lawyer.”

  Diane stopped and let it sink in. It didn’t take long. She saw the change come over her eyes. Gauthier had been indigent, living in dingy retirement homes for almost sixty years, and her brother had prospered. The whole family had prospered.

  “Is that the truth?” Gauthier said.

  Diane had found a photo on the Internet for the occasion. It was an award banquet for Everett’s son, Gordon Walters. The whole family was there, sitting around the table. Thank God for the Internet. She went over to Gauthier and handed her the photo.

  “This is your brother here. Beside him is your nephew, Gordon Walters, his wife, Wendy, and your grandnephew, Tyler Walters,” said Diane.

  “Walters?” said Maybelle Gauthier. “Why is his name Walters?”

  “Your father left Rosewood and changed his name,” Diane said.

  “Everett looks like Father,” she said. “He looks like Father.”

  “Does he?” said Diane.

  “He left me here and never looked for me.” She looked up at Diane and her eyes were hard, like jet coal. “You came here for my story. Okay, I’ll tell it. I’ll tell you my story, all of it. There’s not much they can do to me now.”

  Chapter 54

  “Father was a hard man with no use for art, or daughters. But Mother was rich and she was strong willed. She protected me. I didn’t have any pets growing up. I knew better. Father couldn’t be trusted. He was mean and vindictive.” Maybelle Gauthier looked at Lillian. “If your father was alive, he would tell you. My father ruined many men with lies. Lies were sharper than swords.”

  “I seem to remember Papa saying something about Jonathan Gauthier,” said Lillian.

  “Mother divorced him and lived on her own. She owned property in Pigeon Ridge and told me I could live there. Father tried to marry me off to one of his friends. I wouldn’t have it. I was in love with someone else, an artist.”

  She shook her head and her eyes suddenly softened. She was quiet for a moment. When she spoke again, Diane almost jumped, her voice was so filled with venom.

  “Father ruined him, ruined his family, and told me it was my fault. I heard he died not long after. I think he killed himself. He was sensitive. Not like me. I was as strong as my mother. Like her, I lived by myself. I lived on the money from my trust fund and my portraits.”

  The light filtering through the windows was fading and a kind of darkness settled over the room, even with the overhead lights.

  “I didn’t make any more friends. It was dangerous, because of Father. And after a while I grew too old to marry off. Father found himself a new wife, and they had a son. That was Everett. After that, Father left me alone. He had what he wanted. Then I got two ideas.” Gauthier’s eyes glittered with excitement at the memory.

  “I had grown tired with painting and I wasn’t selling as much as I used to. I always thought Father had something to do with that. It was like him. I still had Mother and my trust fund. I became interested in pottery. I’d see it in art shows in Atlanta and liked the idea of the clay flowing though my fingers. And I quite liked the symbolism of vessels. I didn’t like the shiny stuff the other artists produced. I wanted something more earthy. I discovered how the Indians made pottery, and I liked that. There was a creek not far from my house that had an ample supply of clay. But I wanted to do something d
ifferent.”

  She paused for a moment and licked her thin lips.

  “And I wanted to ruin my father’s favorite thing-his son. Everett was old enough to go about by himself. Children did in those days, especially boys. I invited him to come visit me. I showed him my art. I got to know him. He was a lot like Father-mean. But he seemed to like me well enough. I think because I was strong. Not many people stood up against Jonathan Gauthier.

  “I had an idea for making my pottery come alive, in a manner of speaking. Making each piece have meaning greater than a mere pot. Make it a true vessel. I got Everett to bring me young people his age to model for live masks. I tempered my pottery with grit then and sold the pieces in Atlanta. Mine were unique and they sold well.”

  Diane hadn’t seen Harte leave and didn’t know she was gone until she came back with bottled water for everyone. Apparently she’d noticed Maybelle was getting hoarse.

  Maybelle took a long drink before she continued. Diane was afraid she might change her mind and stop. Hanks thought the same thing, she guessed, for he frowned when he was handed his drink. But she didn’t stop. She merely quenched her thirst.

  “I took Everett to movies in Atlanta-violent movies. I could see by the look in his eyes he liked them. I’d drop little hints about Father-about people who crossed him, how some disappeared. Then I’d say it wasn’t true. It wasn’t, but I knew that denying it would make him believe it. He was so much like Father. I told him so, and he liked the idea. He wanted to be like Father.

  “I’d been toying with the idea for a long time of trying out a new temper that would add more meaning to my work. I needed Everett to do it. I told him about bone temper, how wonderful it was, and how we needed bones to do it. Not just any bones, but human bones, the way the Indians did it, I told him. I gradually raised the idea in his mind of killing one of the people he brought home. Someone no one would miss. I could see the idea excited him. I coaxed him, we talked about it, and I asked him his ideas, until, after a while, he thought it was all his idea. But I told him how to do it, to use the small hatchet and do it quick and efficient. He did and he was good at it. The first one was a tramp.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Diane could see that Harte was shivering. She pulled her sweater tighter around her and nervously fingered her pearls. Vanessa and Lillian were quiet and still, their faces blank masks.

  “I sold a great many pottery vessels, each one with its own unique face-young, old, beautiful, harsh. Did you see the pitcher in Miss Wanamaker’s office? That one wasn’t special and is made with ordinary clay, but you can get the idea of what the others must have been like. Isn’t it beautiful? All the pottery vessels I made after that had a special look about them. People in Atlanta told me they looked as if they could come alive. They were right. But they didn’t know it.”

  She took another long drink and stared off into the distance. Diane thought they might be losing her. She got up and opened the box. In it lay the partial mask that Marcella had put together.

  “We have one of your pieces,” said Diane, handing it to her.

  “Oh, it’s the most beautiful one of all.And Father crushed it. You know, I like it like this. I like the lines formed where the pieces are fitted together. I hadn’t thought of breaking it and putting it back together. That adds another symbolic dimension.”

  “Please go on,” said Diane. “We want to hear about your art.”

  Maybelle Gauthier didn’t take her eyes off the mask in the box as she spoke.

  “I bought a cauldron and put it in the shed, and I boiled the bones down after Everett cut up the pieces that I needed. When the bones were perfectly white, I dried them and crushed them. They made the perfect temper for my clay. I used the face of each person as the form to sculpt the piece. When I finished and it was fired, it was the most beautiful work of art you have ever seen. There was nothing like it in the galleries. It had the rough look of Indian pottery but the delicate sculpting of modern work. Each piece had a spirit in it. People saw it, even if they couldn’t put a name to it. I made a fountain for a man in Atlanta who loved the idea of water coming out of the eyes.

  “Then Father found out. I don’t know how. I suspect that he came to visit when I wasn’t there and saw something he shouldn’t. Everett told me they were coming after me. That’s when I wrote the note. I was afraid. Everett helped me throw everything we could down the well. I hid all my work I had there. But when Father came, he found my pottery and crushed the beautiful pieces in front of my eyes and threw them in the fire pit. I hated him for that. He didn’t find the portraits I did of them. I hid them in the wall, along with a portrait of my mother.”

  “What about the young victims?” said Lillian. “Didn’t you feel bad for them?”

  Diane thought Lillian probably couldn’t hold it in any longer.

  “Oh, they were far better off. The people Everett brought home had terrible lives. At least they could now live forever in art,” she said. “And their suffering was over.”

  “So your father took you to a clinic,” prompted Diane.

  “Yes. What was the name? Something about a river. It was a huge Gothic building. Mother would come to visit me and she would cry. She told me if I got out, Father would see that I went to jail. This way, no one would ever know what I did, and one day I’d get out and could start over. Everett begged me not to tell on him and I didn’t. I didn’t even tell Mother about his part in it.

  “The clinic was a terrible place. At night you could hear people screaming. I never knew what was happening to them. I was smart enough to stay quiet and be easy to get along with. That way they wouldn’t increase my medication or do whatever it was they were doing to the other poor patients.”

  Diane shivered. She and Vanessa exchanged horrified glances. Diane didn’t know very much about the clinic that once had been housed in the museum building. The docents made up ghost stories about the old clinic, but she never considered that strange and terrifying things really may have gone on there.

  “They closed the place down in just a year,” continued Gauthier. “Good riddance. I was taken to another place. I forget the name. I was there for, I don’t know, but it seemed like several years. Mother would come see me, but then she died. She was my last hope. The doctors had to sedate me when I heard. I was still smart enough to be very good and they let me work in the office sometimes. It was there that I saw the surgery orders that my father had signed. He told them to give me a lobotomy. Do you know what that is?”

  Diane nodded. “Yes,” she said.

  “They wanted to cut part of my brain out. I had been around patients who had lobotomies. I would lose everything. I would lose my art. My father would win. I had to do something. He came to visit one evening before they were to do the surgery. I’d planned it all. It was so easy, much easier than making my beautiful pottery. I got some chemicals from the janitor’s closet ahead of time and stole an extra key they kept in the desk drawer of the receptionist’s office. As I said, I had been on good behavior and they gave me pretty much free run of the place. It was as if I were invisible. My father and the doctor were in the doctor’s office with the door shut. Before they knew anything was going on, I set fire to the outside office and locked the door. I left the key in the lock so the doctor couldn’t unlock it from the inside. The office was away from the dormitories in a separate building. There was no one to know or to hear. I stayed there looking at my father and the doctor as they tried to escape. They couldn’t get out the windows because they were barred. There was a glass window in the door, but it was double paned and had wire in between. And I watched them. I watched my father screaming at me. And I did this.”

  She pointed her middle and index fingers at her eyes, then pointed them at Diane. She did it over and over in a sharp, jerking motion, her brows knitted together, her eyes dark.

  “He did that to me as a child when he wanted me to pay attention to him, to look him in the eyes, to let me know he saw me. I called it his
devil look, and I did that to him. That was his last vision-me giving him the devil look. And I’m not sorry I did that to him.”

  Chapter 55

  It was quiet in the room. The light from the windows was almost gone and only the harsh halogen light from the overhead fixtures was left. Diane didn’t know what she thought she was going to hear from Maybelle Agnes Gauthier, but she was oddly stunned and affirmed by what she heard.

  She picked up the folder again and took out the like-nesses that Neva had created of the two skeletons from the well and handed them to Gauthier.

  “Who are they?” Diane asked.

  She ran her wrinkled hands over the drawings. “Lovely,” she whispered. “Who did these?” She looked up at Diane.

  “A woman who works for me,” Diane said.

  “I didn’t name them. A name would have only diminished what I was trying to say,” she said.

  Diane took a breath. “What were their names before you met them?”

  “Dust to dust,” Gauthier whispered. “I was taking them back from whence they came. I crushed them to dust and re-created them into something more beautiful. Something their fathers couldn’t hurt. See”-she looked at the mask still in the box in her lap-“even though my father crushed her, she’s still beautiful.”

  “Who were they?” said Hanks. “We need to know who they were.”

  “It was a long time ago. I don’t remember.”

  “Of course you do,” said Lillian, her voice harsher than Diane had ever heard it. “You painted her; you talked with her as you were doing her portrait. What did you call her? She told you about herself. You knew her father hurt her. What was her name?”

  Gauthier didn’t say anything. She stared at Lillian, but without anger. She gazed at the mask again, brushing it with her fingers, and finally spoke.

  “Patsy. It seems as though I called her Patsy. The boy-I called him Steven because he reminded me of my Steven. He was quiet and sensitive. He sat so still as I painted him. He seemed to take joy in just sitting still. He liked Steven better than his name. I don’t remember what it was,” she said.